Followers

This past weekend DetentionSlip's Anthony David Adams; Gerry Morton of EnergyFirst; Summit Series' Elliott Bisnow & Jeff Rosenthal; and Kim Pingleton of Compass FX took first place in the VIP Scavenger Hunt at Yanik Silver's Underground 5. We ran through Washington, D.C. and ended up being the only team to complete every task. A+ for completeness! Underground is an elite forum of the worlds top internet entrepreneurs / media experts; we were fortunate enough to be invited as VIPs this year.

Running an underground school newspaper in Erie, Pennsylvania is a long way from achieving international media credibility, but that’s just what high school buddies Anthony David Adams and Chuck Steinfurth achieved today, named among the best bloggers in the world by Time Magazine.

Earlier today the pair’s irreverent blog, Detentionslip.org – referred to as the Perez Hilton of education news for its reports on gun-carrying Texas teaches and students handcuffed over skimpy prom dresses - defeated millions of blogs around the world to secure a coveted spot on Time’s Top 25 Blogs of 2009.

Co-creators and former classmates, Adams and Steinfurth, entered the world of dissident education news with an underground student newspaper as juniors in high school, and following multiple censorship attempts – including a threatened law suit - shot to local infamy for their witty exposes on clandestine school happenings.

This formative experience would inspire the pair’s post-college reunion some ten years later to create Detentionslip.org – a blog dedicated to shining a defiant, yet tongue-in-cheek, spotlight on the misdeeds and mishaps of the public school system – providing fodder for prominent education columnists such as Scholastic’s Alexander Russo.

Talking from his New York base, co-creator and serial entrepreneur Anthony David Adams, whose parents are both educators, said he was astounded at Detentionslip’s virtual overnight success.

“Even though we had ambitious goals, neither of us thought that within a year our site would be widely regarded as one of the top sites in this space.

“When you look at hyper-growth online media companies like Google and Facebook, you realize there is really no predicting how quickly these things can take off.”

Adams said plans for the short term included the exploration of partnerships with other media outlets to leverage content and continue to grow as the top source for education news in the country.

Time Magazine’s Top 25 Blogs of 2009 ranks the best in class blogs politics and global affairs to shopping and sports, from millions of blogs worldwide.

Also, we noticed that Scholastic was offering a content widget, so we went ahead and plagarized it. You can now stream DetentionSlip.org headlines to your site / blog with the Official DetentionSlip Widget.* the above photo was originally featured on The Pub website in 1998. The underground high school newspaper was created by DetentionSlip.org co-creators Anthony David Adams (right) and Chuck Steinfurth (Left). It's over 10 years old, but we still look the same.

Below are ten of our favorite education-based political cartoons from around the web. The topics range from budget cuts, to discipline, to technology and beyond. Please use the comment section to help rank them and voice which ones hit home the most.

From the Publisher: Why are so many schools failing? Why are so many teens never finishing high school? Ever wonder where it all went wrong? Is it lack of funding? No Child Left Behind? The "threat" of violence? Increased technology? Or just poor teachers? The authors of the controversial website DetentionSlip.org bring you an in-depth look at why our education system is sinking. This book explores the problems facing our schools by examining recent case studies and offering insight for what needs to be changed.

The biggest issue facing education today is the ongoing corporatization and militarization of public schools. Poor minority and white youth increasingly find themselves in schools modeled after prisons and one consequence is that their behavior, however trivial, is criminalized and they increasingly move from school into the criminal justice system.

Describe the level of parent involvement you feel is necessary for student success.

Parental involvement is always important but the opportunity for parents to provide the care, support, and time differs depending on whether time is a luxury or deprivation for them. Many parents increasingly have two jobs, cannot be home as much as they would like to be, and sometimes lack the skills to work with schools.

How would you invest $1,000,000 into a school district?

Hire more teachers, support staff, and provide the basic resources necessary for all kids to succeed academically

Given the task, how would you restructure our public schools?

Make them smaller, raise teachers’ salaries, reward teachers who work with poor children, give more power to teachers and students, and invest as much money in schools as we do in the Department of Defense.

Tell us a school house memory from your childhood.

I remember going to school and being fascinated with history, because the adults in my working class neighborhood told stories about labor struggles and the heroes of those struggles, people like Big Bill Haywood. When I got the school, I discovered that labor history was written out of the books and all I got was great man theory of history, a history that erased conflict, blacks, working class people, women, and any other group that did not fit into the master narrative.